


Over and Under

by akire_yta



Series: prompt ficlets [571]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 19:30:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16001795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: Anonymous askedCan I make a tag request please? Something to do with a disagreement on a rescue? Perhaps between Scott and Virgil? Thankyou





	Over and Under

Virgil can see the wireframe schematic in his head, the rhizomic sprawl of tunnels and caves almost pulsing to the heartbeat of the trapped miners. Their voices had faded an hour ago, but their biometrics were ticking like a clock, setting the pace of this rescue.

Virgil liked paced and measured in times like this, where one rockfall could turn an extraction into a burial.  He could feel is own pulse, settled like a rock into the rhythm.

The only sour note was the hum and whine of One’s engines as Scott once again tried to hover.  “Virgil, I can jetpack…”

“And kill them.”  His tone is even, his words harder in the dispassionate tone than if he’d screamed them.  “The south face is held together with air pressure and hope.   We need to go around and under.”  Virgil’s mind had run a thousand scenarios, considering and discarding vector after vector until the only solution remained.

It had cost him ten minutes, but he considers it time well spent.

Scott’s fresh off the Alps, pulling a climber off a peak – different types of rock, different types of cave, a different kind of rescue.  He’s hyped up on adrenaline and success, too trusting in his gear, seeing only the straight line path.

Scott liked hard and fast, always, never considering variables like the difference between granite and shale, putting glory and exhilaration above all else.  If he cared to look, Virgil knew Scott’s own pulse would be skipping, hummingbird-fast.  His breathing is harsh in Virgil’s earpiece, their matching helmets amplifying both the noise and the difference between them.

“You’ve wasted enough time,” Scott is saying, his voice betraying his movement from the cockpit to the hold of One.  “I’m going in…..”

Virgil’s already opening Two’s remote controls, adjusting the point on which Two is hovering just a few meters.  No-one witnesses his little smile as he hears the sound of boots contacting metal, Scott’s hissed curse.  “What the– Virgil, did you put Two under my jump?”

“I blocked a hazard,” Virgil wishes Scott would shut up – the seams of minerals thread like veins through this section of rock, he wants to give it his full concentration.  He understands rocks, like Scott understands air, and this place is demanding his respect. In his earpiece, he can hear the distinctive  _clonk clonk clonk_  of Scott’s magnetized boots on Two’s hull as he stumps his way to the nearest hatch.  “Don’t you dare leap off my Bird.  There’s a magazine in the back bunk, take a break.”

This time the curse isn’t muttered, but Virgil’s GPS is pinging the last few meters.  “Scott. I’ve got this, so sit down, shut up, and let me work.” The silence on the line is poisonous but then the Mole’s drill breaks into the cave and Virgil’s got other things to worry about.

Scott is waiting, looking unaccustomed to standing on unsteady earth, as Virgil resurfaces towing a sacktruck like an improvised people mover.  Scott smiles professionally, helps them out to stand blinking under a sun they thought they’d never see again, but Virgil can see the stiffness in his back, the way the smile slips into a gritted scowl every time he tries to approach Virgil and is cut off by a miner coming to thank Virgil again.

Virgil just focuses on the work, on the quiet satisfaction of a hard job done well, and let’s Scott stew in his own frustrations again.

He knows at the island they’ll be another shouting match where Scott blows his top until he runs out of steam, another night of awkward quiet, another half-hearted psuedo-apology days or weeks later, when the reports are filed and Virgil’s calls are vindicated.

Virgil waves the miners off in the medical evac chopper, aware that One has already sped away in a cloud of dust and frustration.  He pauses, one gloved and dusty hand resting on green panelling, and wonders when, exactly, he became so reluctant to go  _home_. 


End file.
